LostVale guide

Ships

Building a ship stage by stage on a slipway, the timber it takes, launching her, sailing by the weather's wind, rowing, lowering the mast for a bridge, and hiring a crew.

Ships in LostVale are built and sailed at full size: you walk their decks while they move. Six classes can be built, from a rowing boat for the lochs to a three-masted frigate for the open ocean (the table below lists them).

The slipway

Set down a slipway where you mean to build. The yard’s site decides what may be built there:

• a rowing boat anywhere on the water’s edge;
• a faering or karvi on a river bank;
• a skeid or cog on a sea coast;
• a frigate only on an ocean coast: one that faces at least twelve kilometres of open water across a wide arc, with five and a half metres of water within a hull’s length of the slip.

A ship goes up stage by stage: lay the keel and stem, hang the strakes, then the frames, decks, mast and fittings. Each stage needs its materials (planks, nails, resin, rope, and for the larger ships keel timber, compass timber for the frames and knees, and spars for the masts) and hours of shipwright’s work. Hired hands work at the slip beside you. The great timber comes from great trees: a keel wants ten metres of straight oak, and a frigate’s lower masts can only be made from old growth (see Building, timber).

When the last stage is done she is launched down the ways.

Sailing

Take the helm with E. At the helm:

• Floating. Each ship floats at the water’s level where she is, on sea or fresh water.
• The wind. Sails drive her in the weather’s wind, which blows harder over open sea than over land and rivers. A square rig cannot sail closer to the wind than her class allows.
• Oars. Oars drive her by how many hands row and how hard; on a small boat you can row yourself. Row against the wind or up a river.
• Currents and drag. Rivers carry her; her hull’s drag holds her back, and more so as she nears her speed.
• Turning. With the helm hard over she turns in a few hull lengths; a boat on oars can turn on the spot, one side backing.
• Shoals and bridges. She runs aground on shoals, and striking ground fast harms the hull. A standing mast strikes a bridge: longships lower theirs into crutches to pass under bridges and row the rivers.
• Aboard. She carries whoever walks her decks, and stows cargo and stores in her hold.

Crew

Hire hands in a settlement (within about 700 metres of its edge). Each hand costs a gold coin a day, paid ten days at a time; pay again before the term runs out to keep them. Hands row, handle the sails and work at the slip. Each class needs a least crew to sail and berths a most; the table below gives both. Only so many are shown on deck at once; the rest are below, off watch.

The Norse at sea

In the raiding season the Norse realms send longships against other coasts, and near a Norse place by the water a trader’s longship sails in now and then, lies at anchor a few hours, and sails on. See Kingdoms, war and faith.

The table below lists every ship, read from the game’s own content.

Written from the game's source and content as of commit 02e81b2 (2026-11-01).